- If the system BIOS executes a "security freeze lock" command upon drivedetection HDDerase attempts to bypass this. A hard reboot is required if theattempt is successful. Afterwards HDDerase should be run once more and thedrive should not be in a frozen state. HDDerase will not attempt to bypass ifa HPA is set.NOTE: This internal method may not work on all drives (MAXTOR drives for sure)and the FAQ should be checked for other methods to bypass the BIOS freeze lock.

If Secure Erase command execution is interrupted before completion, drive will be left in locked state.Run program again after reboot to successfully execute Security Erase and unlock the drive for a new use.After Fast Erase, HDDErase.exe can be run to Secure Erase drive and leave it unlocked and empty.Computer BIOS should be set to boot from floppy A: (some BIOS chips prohibit option 1 and 3)Program creates a log file of important events.The Windows Disk Management system program can be used to partition and format an erased disk for reuse.Secure Erase wipes entire drive - otherwise user data could be left on O/S page files and in slack (not in use) space.Maximum drive capacity for multi-pass overwrites is 2 Terabytes.

This procedure performs a pseudo-formatting to the drive. It erases all of your previous data and reinitializes it to "00" pattern. By performing this task, you will be able to erase the whole user area including your Master Boot Record, Partition Table, FAT (File Allocation Table), and all the files and data it refers to. Use this program if you want to be sure your drive is clean.

Q: My laptop shut down before the secure erase ended, etc... Now my hard drive is locked with a password. How do I unlock it?

A: Normally if the secure erase procedure does not complete HDDerase can be run again and unlock your drive and then complete the erase procedure. An audittrail will be written to LBA 0 to confirm this. If you are unable to run HDDerase again the user password that is set for HDDerase v3.2 is: "idrive" under maximum security. The user password that is set for all versions of HDDerase v3.1 and below is: xty3fgds2h32j4kd02k9rfgep36435" under maximum security. A number of free utilities are available to unlock drives, such as atapwd(http://www.rockbox.org/lock.html) and MHDD (http://hddguru.com/content/encorrect url:http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/) to name a few. Please verify the correct version you are using and unlock with the appropiate password, then disable with the same password.

I am glad that it worked.
May I ask you a strange question? Can you try to clear your hard drive again with HHDerase3.3? And see if you get the problem again.
If you have it again, we better also include MHDD to UBCDV50 to unlock the drive and add this info to the help text (in a link posted above there was someone with the same problem that you had). I have looked at the hhderase with a hex editor, it contains both passwords twice. This seems very strange to me. I thought that HHDerase 3.3 only uses idrive as password.

I have a computer which I'm having an issue with the IDE connectors on the MB... I've been trying to install Linux on it, but it always fails reading the disk at some point (the disk worked on other computers, I've used known good CD Drives and IDE cables that worked on other computers). So it is definitely a flaky IDE connection on the MB.

The good news is, it's just pretty much a dead box with no OS, so it should make a good test candidate to see if I can reproduce this error. I'll let you know what happens.

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